The Wisdom of the Feminine
The feminine, whether the feminine principle or women themselves, holds the secret of creation, which is the light hidden in matter. It is very important to understand that if one is to do any real spiritual work at this time of global and ecological crisis because the feminine holds the unique understanding of the sacredness in matter and how we need to reawaken that aspect of life... I think both the feminine principle (the receptive quality in consciousness) and individual women in particular, have a unique roll to play. This also needs to be honored by the feminine principle within men -- that can understand the power of the receptive feminine and her particular relationship to the spiritual principle of holding the light that is needed to redeem the world -- the sacred light that the feminine understands because women alone can give birth to a human being, can bring the light of a divine soul into this world...
It is the feminine that understands all the interconnections in life. And what we are suffering from at the moment is a very fragmented culture, very isolated, very insular, and as I have been shown there is this whole oneness that is emerging into the consciousness of humanity, which needs to be midwifed into our collective consciousness -- to understand that ecologically we are one, economically we are one, and of course in the deep spiritual sense we are all one expression of the divine oneness that is inherent within everything. The feminine understands those connections that hold that together -- Indra’s Web -- that is behind creation and is present within creation.
—Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee quote from Goddess Radio Santa Fe Interview: click to hear the full interview
What my Sheik taught us, and it is not generally known in the West, is that women have a certain spiritual substance in them that men do not. It has to do with the mystery of creation. When I looked at it, it has to do with the fact that not only can a woman give birth physically but she is able to be in a place where the light of the soul takes on human form and remains true to its essential nature. The more you look at it, it is really extraordinary...
Many of you who are involved in healing and spiritual life know that if a human being is too damaged they cannot realize their spiritual potential first, they need to be healed. And the same is happening in the world and women have this magical substance in their being that has to do with the real mystery of creation -- where light takes on form, takes on human consciousnes, and remains true to its essential nature.
—Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee quote from Women & Healing the Earth: New Zealand Talk: click to hear the full talk
The feminine has deep understanding of the power of matter. Women carry the instinctual knowing of the divine substance in matter and of how to bring this substance into life, because this knowledge is fundamental in the process of giving birth, in bringing a soul into human form. Now this wisdom is needed for the regeneration of the earth, for the earth’s awakening.
—Awakening the World: A Global Dimension to Spiritual Practice, page 66
This is why the wisdom of the feminine is so important, because the feminine understands the dynamics of relationship, how to listen and be receptive. Feminine consciousness is more attuned to the life of the body, and so knows the rhythms that belong to the cycles of life, rather than the systems imposed by will that are presently strangling our world. The feminine is more instinctively and naturally attuned to life, its patterns and powers. And feminine consciousness is less dominated by reason, more open to the mystery of the symbolic inner world. The feminine is vital in this work of awakening.
—Alchemy of Light: Working with the Primal Energies of Life, page 48
Certain kinds of work now specifically require the light of women. There is, for example, a work of bringing into this plane of existence a particular quality or vibration of spiritual energy that is needed for the transformation of life. This is a spiritual energy that belongs to the sacredness of matter, and because women have an instinctual understanding of the sacred nature of matter, this work of transmission can only be done by women. Women carry the sacred substance of life in their spiritual centers and understand how to give this quality of light to life; in their ability to give birth, women have the natural capacity to bring the light of a soul into the physical world of matter and thus awaken the spiritual potential of matter. Women also understand the connections between people and the connections within life; at this time women are needed to bring a seed of pure light into life where it can create new forms and new patterns of interrelationship that are essential to the healing and transformation of life.
—Alchemy of Light: Working with the Primal Energies of Life, page 10
Part of our problem is that the nurturing and meaning of relationships traditionally belong to the feminine, and we have not included this understanding that is natural to women in our technological progress. We are still working primarily within a masculine analytic paradigm, rather than fully integrating the wisdom of the feminine. The feminine kind of knowing has a crucial role to play in the development of this technology.
—Spiritual Power, page 57
Everything that comes into life has two sides, a masculine and feminine quality, even love. The masculine side of love is “I love you.” Longing is the feminine side of love: “I am waiting for you. I am longing for you.” Longing is the cup waiting to be filled. And sadly, because our culture has devalued the feminine, we have repressed so much of her nature, so many of her qualities. Instead we live primarily masculine values; we are goal-oriented, competitive, driven. Masculine values even dominate our spiritual quest; we seek to be better, to improve ourself, to get somewhere. We have forgotten the feminine qualities of waiting, listening, being empty. We have dismissed the deep need of the soul, our longing, the feminine side of love.
—Love is a Fire: The Sufi's Mystical Journey Home, page 23
The feminine side of love, receptivity and longing, is neither valued nor understood. We are taught to struggle, not to surrender.
—Signs of God, page 73
The soul is feminine before God, waiting in a state of surrender for the Beloved to come. The sixteenth-century Indian princess and poet Mirabai knew this mystical truth. Mirabai was devoted to Krishna, her “Dark Lord,” and once, when she was wandering in some woodlands sacred to Krishna, a famous theologian and ascetic named Jiv Gosvami denied her access to one of her Dark Lord’s temples because she was a woman. Mirabai shamed him with the words: “Are not all souls female before God?” Jiv Gosvami bowed his head and led her into the temple.
The lover waits for her Beloved. And when He comes to us, in those moments of meeting and merging that are so intimate that one can hardly speak of them, the lover is feminine, pierced, penetrated by the tremendous bliss of His love.
—Love is a Fire: The Sufi's Mystical Journey Home, page 27
Listening is a wisdom so easily overlooked, because it is feminine, receptive, hidden, and our culture values only what is visible.
—The Circle of Love, page 20
The World Soul
In our individual journey of awakening we come to experience how the physical world is no longer a place of imprisonment for the soul, but a place for us to realize and enact our true nature. The awakening of the soul of the world can allow humanity as a whole to begin to realize and enact its larger destiny. We can consciously participate in the vast unfolding of love that is happening throughout our galaxy and beyond.
—Light of Oneness, page 108
The soul of the World permeates all of creation like salt in water. The physical world is the denser plane, and within it and sustaining it is the reality of the soul, which contains the Higher Intelligence that is the creative and ordering principle of life.
—Awakening the World: A Global Dimension to Spiritual Practice, page 66
The light of the World soul is waiting to be used to connect us with the inner powers that belong to matter and to life itself. The real world is an enchanted place, full of magical powers waiting to be used. And, as the alchemists understood, the anima mundi is a creative force: “it is the artist, the craftsperson, the ‘inner Vision’ which shapes and differentiates the prime matter, giving it form.”
—Awakening the World: A Global Dimension to Spiritual Practice, page 83
The World soul is not a fixed or defined substance, but a living substance made out of the hopes, dreams, and deepest imaginings of humanity and of all creation. (pg 81)
—Awakening the World: A Global Dimension to Spiritual Practice, page 66
The soul of the World is crying out to be saved. It is the responsibility of spiritually awake human beings to respond to this cry—to allow our hearts to be used for this work.
—Awakening the World: A Global Dimension to Spiritual Practice, page 101
The heart of the world is beginning to sing the song of divine remembrance, but no one is listening; no one is attentive. We have even forgotten that the world has a heart. Medieval texts image man as a microcosm of the world, but we dismissed this symbolic relationship, just as we rejected the older vision of the earth as a living being. As the world stopped being a sacred or symbolic reality and became just matter governed by the laws of physics, so the heart, or “soul of the world” (anima mundi), was discarded as a myth.
—Working with Oneness, page 4
The song of the soul of the world carries the fragrance of His love for us, a love in which everything is made sacred. This song, which we each hear in our own way, will guide us, will awaken our hearts and attune our souls. It is a most powerful magic because it reminds us who we really are, that we are the children of the orient who have come from a dimension of light upon light to discover the secret of creation, the way His light is reflected in His world.
—Working with Oneness, page 107
Redeeming the Feminine
In each age there is a fundamental shift in the way the divine reveals itself. This shift has already taken place… What is being born within the soul of the world is a quality of consciousness that comes from a union of masculine and feminine. We need to reclaim the feminine so that it can unite with the masculine in a new way, through which a new consciousness can be born, a new way of relating to life, enabling us to have a fuller understanding of our true nature and purpose. Then the deeper meaning of the feminine can become visible, the hidden purpose of the masculine enacted.
—Signs of God, page 97
If we are not to remain in the paradigm of duality, living our inherited split between masculine and feminine, spirit and matter, we need to acknowledge both of these aspects. We cannot afford to follow the footsteps of the patriarchal church fathers and seek only a transcendent light, look only towards heaven. We also need to know the light hidden in matter and understand the magic of creation that it reveals.
—Awakening the World: A Global Dimension to Spiritual Practice, page 78
Once we acknowledge the relationship of macrocosm and microcosm within the oneness of life, it becomes apparent how our forgetfulness, our attitudes and actions have caused pain to the soul of the World. We have damaged the inner structures of light and love that nourish our planet; we have created dark clouds in the inner worlds that obscure us from the light. Our values are having a global effect, not only to our physical ecosystem but to the spiritual body of the planet.
—Awakening the World: A Global Dimension to Spiritual Practice, page 101
The light of the soul of the world needs the participation of all who are open to this work. But part of our redemption of the feminine is to acknowledge that certain work can only be done by women. The interconnections of life belong to the wisdom of the feminine and a woman’s body holds the knowledge of how the worlds interrelate. Masculine consciousness imaged a transcendent divinity—the feminine knows how the divine is present in every cell of creation. Women know this not as abstract knowledge, but part of their instinctual nature—in the womb the light of a soul can come into physical form. Life is standing at the edge of an abyss of forgetfulness waiting for the light of the world to be born. This birth needs the wisdom of the feminine, and women must take their place in this time of great potential.
—Spiritual Power, page 62
We need to reclaim the wisdom of the feminine but we cannot return to the time of the priestess. The masculine and feminine have to work together; our actions in the outer world must be guided by our receptivity to the inner. And there is no hierarchy to this work. Part of the blueprint of the future is the ability of each individual to participate directly with the work of the whole.
—Spiritual Power, page 81
As this era of masculine dominance comes to an end and a feminine understanding of life’s wholeness is included, we are beginning to experience a different world in which physical, mental, and spiritual well-being are interdependent. We see the signs of this in the new age movement. But the new age movement is often limited by its focus on individual well-being. Our real concern is the well-being of the planet and the whole of humanity. Central to this is the understanding that the physical world cannot be healed from a solely physical perspective, but requires a shift to an attitude that contains a multi-dimensional approach.
—Light of Oneness, page 156
If life does not change, it dies, and yet paradoxically we are so frightened of death that we try to hold back the flow of life. Without knowing it, we are caught in a masculine idealized image, a longing for perfection that denies the feminine with its understanding of darkness, decay, and destruction. Without darkness there can be no birth; nothing creative can take place. Without destruction there can be no cycle of life, only a sterile environment in which nothing grows. If we do not accept the darkness, life will lose whatever meaning it has left. If we do not allow ourself to live in the darkness, the doors of revelation will remain closed.
—Working with Oneness, page 131
Many women are unknowingly caught in a collective conditioning in which the feminine is made subservient to masculine, rational values. The feminine qualities of relating, listening, waiting are repressed in favor of rational thought and goal-oriented drives. American culture may appear to give freedom to women, but there is a collective pattern that denies the real nature of the feminine. As one woman said to me, “In this culture a woman can be anything she wants, as long as it is masculine.” Yet many spiritual qualities needed for the path, such as creating a sacred inner space, belong to the feminine. Often our spiritual nature lies buried under collective taboos, and requires courage and commitment to be rediscovered and lived. Using our golden bowl for the purpose for which it was made is never easy.
—Love is a Fire: The Sufi's Mystical Journey Home, page 52
Shame is a particular affliction for women. Shame has long been a tool of collective patriarchal repression. In our Judeo-Christian culture woman was blamed for banishing us from the Garden of Eden, and since then women have been made to feel ashamed of their instinctual self, of their bodies, of their femininity, and also of their spiritual nature. Feminine spirituality carries the sacred wholeness of life, which has been despised and rejected by the masculine which longs to escape the limitations of the physical world. For many women a deep, imposed shame comes to the surface and has to be faced.
—Love is a Fire: The Sufi's Mystical Journey Home, page 140
The last two thousand years, the Piscean era, have been dominated by the process of separatio. The sign of Pisces is two fish, a duality which in the West we have experienced as the separation of spirit and matter, mind and body, conscious and unconscious. The separation into opposites evokes the constellation of the shadow; thus the physical world, which since time immemorial has been identified with the feminine, has carried both the darkness of the rejected feminine and the shadow side of the spiritual quest.
—Bond with the Beloved: The Mystical Relationship of Lover and Beloved, page 24
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